Way back in Game of Thrones' third season, Bran Stark told his companions an old story about the worst sin a person could commit. At some point in Westeros' history, Bran says, a king went up to the Wall to visit the Night's Watch. During that visit, an angry cook murdered the king's son, baked him into a meat pie, and served it to the king, who unknowingly asked for seconds. For this transgression, the story goes, the gods transformed the cook into an immortal rat, forced to scurry around eating his own children. "It wasn't for murder that the gods killed the Rat Cook, or for serving the king's son in a pie," Bran finished. "He killed a guest beneath his roof. That’s something that the gods can't forgive."

Game of Thrones' overarching morality is packed with compelling contradictions, and "Home" is full of allegedly inviolable rules being violated.

Game of Thrones is full of little stories like this—bits of folklore and history, scattered around like parables, to serve as ethical guideposts for both the characters and the viewers. What Bran couldn't have known at the time was that he was telling that story in the immediate aftermath of the Red Wedding—the exact same unforgivable crime of the Rat Cook, committed against his mother and brother. The only difference was the ending: Unlike the Rat Cook, the perpetrators of the Red Wedding remain utterly unpunished for their crime.

That is, of course, until this week's "Home," which sees Roose Bolton getting gutted like a fish by Ramsay, his emboldened son. And that murder violates another of the gods’ most sacred laws: a strict taboo against killing one's own family members — which Ramsay violates again, almost immediately, when he has his stepmother and newborn brother ripped to shreds by his hounds. We'll see if he ever ends up punished for it.

Was Roose Bolton's death a bit of delayed cosmic justice—the monstrous bastard son he legitimized and empowered being used as a tool of the gods? Or was it just his own bad judgment in trusting a psychopath like Ramsay, which inevitably led to his own violent death?

Who can tell? At this late stage of the series, Game of Thrones' overarching morality is packed with compelling contradictions, and "Home" is full of allegedly inviolable rules being violated. Some, like kinslaying, defy generations of Westerosi taboos about the nature of right and wrong. Some, like the High Sparrow's successful rout of the Lannister family, topple every conventional idea about the powerful and the powerless, and offer confirmation bias for Cersei's suspicion that the gods are punishing her for her sins. And others—like Jon Snow's spectacular resurrection at the hands of Melisandre and her Lord of Light—cast off the seemingly immutable laws of mortality itself. (As it turns out, you really can tell the God of Death "not today.") Tyrion reflects on his childhood, shedding tears over the fact that all the dragons were extinct, while he stands in front of two huge dragons. With so much established wisdom proving false, how can the characters treat anything as fact?

In "Home," even time proves to be less concrete than it might have seemed when the series began. Game of Thrones has always carried the weight of history—from the very first episode, when Ned Stark taught his son Bran an old lesson about passing the sentence and swinging the sword. Five seasons later, this week's "Home" opens with a startling inversion of the natural order. Bran Stark, now much older than when we last saw him, is immersed in a vision of the past: Ned Stark in Winterfell, practicing swordplay, at the same rough age that Bran was when Game of Thrones first began.

This relatively light-hearted flashback—which is clearly laying groundwork for more dramatic revelations to come—has the side effect of making "Home" the Stark-iest episode of Game of Thrones since Ned’s head was chopped off at the Sept of Baelor. It starts with the decades-old vision of Ned, his brother Benjen, and his sister Lyanna, as seen by present-day Bran. But it continues with drop-ins on three of the four remaining Stark children: Sansa, Arya, and Jon Snow. (Poor little Rickon, still M.I.A., has been off-screen since season three's "The Rains of Castamere.") And while the miserable deaths of Ned, Catelyn, and Robb continue to cast a long shadow over the rest of the Stark clan, there are hopeful signs that justice may still be on the horizon.

Admittedly, you might need to squint pretty hard to see it. If you’re looking for evidence of the gods' ruthlessness, you can hardly find a better subject than Sansa Stark, whose original sin came all the way back in Season One, when she foolishly sided with the Lannisters over her father. The years since have provided her with a never-ending battery of punishments, culminating in her abusive marriage to Ramsay Bolton. But after all that horror, Sansa's relief came in the unlikeliest of forms: Theon Greyjoy, seeking his own redemption, who facilitated her escape from the castle. Now that Sansa is safely under Brienne's care, and on her way to rendezvous with Jon Snow Castle Black, Theon can face his own consequences—and maybe his own atonement—back at his family's homestead on Pyke.

Thousands of miles away, Arya Stark is blind and begging on the streets of Braavos, as punishment for her decision to throw off her training and kill Meryn Trant in last year's season finale. Becoming "no one" is a challenge for anyone, but it's a particularly tall order for Arya, who spent her entire young life proud of the knowledge that she belonged to one of the Great Houses of Westeros. You can hardly blame her for wanting revenge against the people who played a role in killing everyone she loves, but even with a few names left on her oft-repeated "prayer," Arya has finally realized that it's not her job to seek revenge. When Jaqen H'ghar approaches, offering food, shelter, and even her sight back if she'll only acknowledge her name, Arya refuses, completing the latest task in her quest to become faceless.

If Bran, Sansa, and Arya are in the midst of figurative transformations, though, Jon Snow's metamorphosis is about as literal as it gets. Nothing about Jon Snow's resurrection comes as a surprise; most viewers figured out exactly how this would happen months ago. But that doesn’t make the circumstances or implications any less compelling for the characters involved. "Seven gods, drowned gods, tree gods, it's all the same," says Davos as he asks Melisandre to use her magic to bring Jon Snow back from the dead. "I'm not asking the Lord of Light for help. I'm asking the woman who showed me that miracles exist."

Which is a fine philosophy—until Melisandre actually brings him back, and the questions begin to arise. Now that Jon Snow is back, who gets credit for it? And are there consequences for such a flagrant violation of the natural order? The episode ends before we get the answer, but the look on Jon Snow’s face suggests that he’s seen things on his way back onto the mortal coil—and as always with Game of Thrones, it's hard to imagine anything so powerful would come without powerful consequences.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 1/4/2014) and Privacy Policy (effective 1/4/2014). GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Condé Nast.